Burn
Time began with the Universe. Without Time, causality starts to lose its meaning.
Ah, time is just a way of stopping everything happening at the same time. If the Universe began (and time with it), then by definiton there was something happening before the Universe and therefore before time. This is one instance where lack of time didn't prevent stuff happening.
You can define "God" however you like, but "God" as I understand it is by definition eternal. And "eternal" in this context does not mean infinite regression, but timelessness.
Oh. I understand the way you see it. And as long as you understand it is unsupportable by anything other than you asserting it is so, that's fine.
Caedes
Whilst I personally have no problem with your definition of yahweh,
Argh. My definiton of god has 0.0% to do with that bifercated Levantine tribal diety.
you have to accept that if you are allowed to redefine god as you wish then so is any other theist.
Yup. As I think is fairly clear from "They may be for them of course, but the minute they take it outside their head they get it wrong."
If your concept is to have any validity then so must everyone else's.
No. If someone believes in YHWH Biblegod and in the Bible literalistically their concept of god has less validity than mine.
Various forms of god have varying degrees of validity. You can't tar them all with the same brush.
I somehow doubt that theists will find your concept god very appealing compared to their god who is supposed to forgive them their sins, reunite them with loved ones and provide an eternity of cloud dwelling harp twiddling blissfullness.
You mean some theists, as that ideation of god is very old hat and you are stereotyping theists into a monobelief.
Coming from a cultic background that is how we typicaly conceptualise people's ideation of god (Sevendaycreatin'Labourpaininflictin'Floodbringin'Toungeconfusin'Ethniccleansin'YAHWEH), and BOY did it take me a long time to stop reacting to what I thought other people thought god was and trying to disprove that instead of actually trying to understand how they see god and reacting to that. The local RC's (Dutch, so liberal, but locally WAY liberal even for Dutch RC's) are a good case in point. Ex-cultboy spitting and clawing at what he thought they thought and finding out he was tilting at windmills. The RC's I know actually think the Pope's a bit of a git but are too polite to get down to it unless you really press them. Lot's of religious people (the quiet ones typically) have very vauge and fluffy ideas about god and belief. We just have our perception wharped by the cult we escape and the gobby-shouty ones who hang round here insisting they have some form of the truth even after discoverin the last truth they had wasn't (or if they weren't JW's themselves, waiting for recent leavers like a dealer outside a Narcotics Anonymous meeting).
Hear hear, but is your concept god tangible?
Yup; "capable of being precisely identified or realized by the mind". Tangible (Webster). I poo dictionaries.
I agree that human beings make these definitions and are free to change them, whether it be marriage or god. I sincerely wish you the best of luck in convincing theists your definition is better than what they have.
You're lumping again. Stop projecting your beliefs about theists onto a large number of theists who are not nearly so bad as that.
The problem is that without anything tangible the effects of your concept god may be short lived.
IS tangible, by definition. And ideas outlast Empires.
I don't accept any of their claims, or yours come to that! Since you have no proof of your claim any more than they do. You have exactly what they have, a belief without empirical evidence.
Ah, but MANY forms of theos NOT having concrete evidence is a test of credulity. Mine not having concrete evidence is consitent with my form of theos. You still don't have to accept it, but as you accept what I am getting at using different words you not accepting my idea of god is just semantics, as you accept the existence of what my idea of god is under another name.
Cracking discussion this, I am just about avoiding tying myself in knots...
Whilst I find your fat free god infinitely more appealling than the one of a bunch of goat burning bronze age age nomads with delusions of grandeur, does not make it any more truthful or tangible.
Covered above.
I like reality, the world is a wonderful enough place without a god (of any flavour). Probably what I understand the least is why you would wish to use such a loaded phrase to express something that would work much better without the baggage and implications of the word god.
Half of it is for the fun of it. Half is deadly serious, having had something (I know could be completely coincidental) happen to me at the worst point in my life exactly as I imagined it would do that gave me a sense of... well, hard-boiled atheist ex-cult boy can only find the word 'grace' to describe it. And that bugs me, but there you go.
What I realised was that I do not know it all, and that everything is connected, and that there is always hope. 1.01 in humility; Aslan is not a tame lion (dunno if you'll get that but it makes sense to me).
I assure you I can rationalise it backwards six ways before Whitsun. But the emotional impact is different. And why should I want to get rid of something that does make my life better? It's not like I believe in much more than the IDEA. I no more believe in silly primative gods than I did before, I am just more open minded about what god might be and also about the evolutionary reasons why we might believe in god.
Nothing wrong with kicking ideas about, people should do it more often.
Absolutely. I've lived (previously) in Exeter. Where do you hail from?
